An All-Female Welding Team Built Studio Kuhlmann’s Gorgeous, Stainless Steel Ode to Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreams, the new solo show from German designer and welder Hannah Kuhlmann, is an ode to unconscious depths, afternoon naps, and theta state reverie. On view at St Vincents gallery in Antwerp through mid-May, these pieces evoke an atmosphere somewhere between illusion and reality, following a kind of dream logic where the unexpected is encountered and absorbed. Lucid dreaming, after all, is when you realize you’re dreaming in your dream. “I wanted to capture the essence of those moments of heightened awareness within our subconscious,” Kuhlmann says. “The title Lucid Dreams speaks to the surreal experience of being both asleep and awake, where the mind wanders freely and perceptions shift.”
More
female italian designer The Ladies Room

These Four Women Are Leading Milan’s Design Scene — Both Together and Apart

This July, a design show in a Parisian apartment harnessed the talents of what feels like at least half of Milan’s up-and-coming design scene. Called "You Are Welcome" by The Ladies' Room collective — a collaborative project made up of Agustina Bottoni, Ilaria Bianchi, Sara Ricciardi, and Astrid Luglio — the show took the form of an intimate, female-centered salon, where objects vibrated with their own peculiar presences. All brilliant designers in their own right, the four have been working together since 2016 when they met at the Turin-based design fair Operae.
More

Think Women Are Underrepresented in the Creative Arts? This Exhibition Does Too

The design world hasn't yet grappled with the chronic underrepresentation of women by brands — the Instagram @showmealist was a good idea that seems to have sadly fizzled out — but female designers and curators are doing just fine supporting each other, thankyouverymuch. The latest is an exhibition at Ox Poblenou in Barcelona, inaugurated on International Women's Day and curated by Sanna Völker, a Swedish furniture designer and curator living in Spain.
More

This Dutch Design Duo Ignores What’s “Right” in Their Quest to Make Something Perfect

Over the last few years, the Dutch studio RENS has been busy building a diverse portfolio of experimental yet resolved and alluring designs. Each project they undertake breathes new life into familiar processes and is approached from a purposefully uninformed standpoint. In fact, by knowing less about a production method and the way things “should be done,” they find the beauty and potential in rejects and mistakes.
More

All Hail Block Shop’s Affordable, Art Deco–Inspired Woodblock Prints

Did you, like us, visit Block Shop's reading room at Sight Unseen OFFSITE and wish you could walk away with just a fraction of the sisters' sunny decor (including that bonkers amazing banana flower plant?) If so, consider your wish granted: This week the L.A.–based studio released its first edition of woodblock prints on colored paper, and they're a perfect, low-risk way to incorporate some of the sisters' graphic sensibility into your own home.
More

In Artisan-Heavy Guatemala, a Young Maker Forging a New Path in Industrial Design

The last time we featured the work of Sofia Véliz — a two-piece set of folded-steel gallery furniture made for a Diego Sagastume exhibition — we wondered what else the Guatemala City designer might have up her sleeve. Over a year and a half later, we’re finding out: From extracting rubber powder from tires to seeking inspiration from Finnish film sets, to exploring the balance between utilitarian design and the urge to experiment, there’s no question that the 25-year-old designer keeps herself busy.
More

A Belgian Designer in Morocco On What It’s Like to Run a Global Brand Via Instagram

Working from the center of a medina in Marrakech might not seem like the most straightforward way to achieve international acclaim, but with an aesthetic that walks right up to an Anthro catalog, then takes a sharp left toward Picasso, Laurence Leenaert of LRNCE has done just that. We caught up with Leenaert in her showroom-cum-studio to find out what it's like to run a global brand via Instagram, how she stays inspired, and why she can’t imagine being anywhere else.
More
Eny Lee Parker

Eny Lee Parker’s New Ceramic Chainmail Has a Secret Message Encoded in Its Links

Where do you go after you've been named this year's "breakout American design star" AND one of the best fashion brands of 2017? If you're Eny Lee Parker, you just keep churning out incredible new work, even if you're in the throes of an upcoming cross-country move. The triple-threat ceramicist/furniture designer/jewelry maker debuted a new collection this weekend, and while the new work covers some familiar ground (thick ceramic legs as table bases), Parker also dug deep into a new obsession: ceramic chainmail.
More

These Women Are Teaming Up for a Powerhouse Ceramics Collab

It seems inevitable that some of the women included in Egg Collective's powerhouse Designing Women exhibition last spring would end up making their working relationship long-term, but we couldn't be happier about the first pairing: From their Soho showroom, throughout the next year, Egg Collective will be commissioning and selling capsule collections of ceramic work by Natalie Herrera, whose graphic, geometry-inspired pieces feel very much of a kind with Egg Collective's aesthetic.
More